Weighted
by beeftony
Summary: A totem is the most personal item one can possess. To reveal its secrets to another would be to undo its entire purpose. But it also means the only person you can rely on is yourself. Originally written for a contest on DA.


_Bishops move diagonally. That's why they often turn up where the kings don't expect them to be._  
-Terry Pratchett, _Small Gods_

"So do you ever cheat at Craps?"

She could imagine the gears turning in Arthur's head as he no doubt tried to discern what exactly prompted her to ask that question. Ariadne admitted that it seemed random, but the truth was that she found it difficult to enjoy leaning against him and letting his arms encircle her waist when she could feel his small, plastic cube of a totem impressing a dent into her lower back.

"You need two dice to play Craps, Ariadne," was his response a moment later. "And Eames is the one who cheats casinos out of their money in his spare time."

"Well then why is your totem a loaded die?" she asked, now that she had pried her way into the conversation she'd been wanting to have for months.

"I shouldn't tell you that," he warned, even as his upper arms slid along her shoulders so his hands could come together and he muttered the next words directly into her ear. "If you knew my secrets, you could trap me in a dream for as long as you wanted."

"You say that like it's a bad thing," she joked, and his laughter told her he understood that it was exactly that. She would never betray his trust in the way that he was suggesting.

"Well I'd rather you didn't," he replied, nuzzling her earlobe and making her hiss. "You're so much better in reality."

"And w-why's that?" she stuttered as his talented nose moved to tickle her neck and was joined shortly thereafter by his even better lips.

"When I kiss you... in the dream... your makeup never smudges," he explained between kisses. "It doesn't have any repercussions."

"I thought that was the point." And it was; they both knew that. Dreams had many advantages when engaging in romantic liaisons, not the least of which was privacy. In the real world, they were just two bodies lying next to each other, connected to a briefcase by thin plastic tubes. But in that level below reality, where nothing was impossible, they were free to run wild without having to worry about what it would mean when they woke up.

Also, it eliminated the need for many things when they decided to take things further than just kissing.

Still, she admitted that even though her mind could reproduce any sensation in a dream, it was nice to be able to steal a private moment in the real world without having to worry about projections charging into the room intent on expelling the invader. The first time they met for a tryst, Arthur had gotten decked by a projection that looked exactly like Ariadne's father while her mother held him by the arms. She had apologized profusely after the ordeal, but in typical Arthur fashion, he had refused to let her take the blame, and insisted that they were taking things too fast. She shut him up with a kiss.

They had started fortifying their surroundings after that. The first time they made love, it was in the middle of a bank vault.

"Well sometimes I like to see you look less than perfect," he told her when he was finished lavishing attention on her neck. "Reminds me that you're real."

"Sweet as that is, don't try and change the subject," she chided, catching on to his game. He always brought out the kisses when he wanted to avoid talking about something. "I promise I won't be the Delilah to your Samson."

"You're the one with the long hair," Arthur reminded her as he buried his face in it and took a deep breath.

She giggled and surrendered to the attention, pushing her questions aside. It had taken almost a whole year of hard work and finding weak points in his immaculate armor just to get him to be this intimate with her. If he didn't want to open up completely, he didn't have to do it right now. She had plenty of time to crack him.

"Alright, lovebirds, snuggle time is over," announced a voice from the other end of the workshop. "Lunch has arrived."

Or not.

Ariadne groaned and separated herself from Arthur, standing up from the lawn chair and bounding over to Eames to retrieve her orange chicken and rice. Even though they were in New York for their current job, she could never get enough Asian food after Saito had introduced her to it—though he would surely be horrified to find her partaking in simple Chinese takeout. And anything was better than French cuisine.

"I'd ask if you two got any work done while I was gone, but the question seems moot," the Forger commented when she got close enough to hold her hands out in eager anticipation. He was not staring at her, but rather at the flustered Point Man behind her.

"Can't work on an empty stomach," she remarked, snatching the cardboard box and the chopsticks before scurrying over to her desk.

"Oh, but you can cuddle?" the Brit called after her. "I think that's less a question of food and more to do with Arthur's secret love of spooning."

"I'd hate to think how you know about it if it's such a secret," Arthur retorted as he received his own meal, which consisted of steak and potatoes ordered from a slightly more upscale restaurant than her eternally cheap tastes would ever allow her to consider. Even though this occupation had made her a much richer woman than she ever thought she would be, Ariadne still dressed and acted the part of a starving college kid. It made people underestimate her, which allowed her to pull the rug out from under them when they found out just how sophisticated she could be.

It had certainly caught Arthur off guard the first time he saw her in a dress.

Eames muttered something about lovesick idiots before lumbering over to his own desk and digging out a simple cheeseburger and fries. He never did share the exotic tastes of his colleagues.

"So do I want to know what you two were babbling on about when I entered, or can I safely assume it was something to do with butterflies and rainbows?" he quipped after a few moments of silence interspersed with the sounds of chewing.

"Puppies," Arthur remarked, and she nearly coughed up a mouthful of rice. "Ariadne wanted to get one."

This was technically true, but that conversation had been weeks ago. Eames knew that as well, so it was fairly obvious to both of them that the Point Man was simply trying to distract them with sarcasm.

"Actually, I was asking him for the story behind his totem," she answered since he was never going to admit it. "But for _some reason_ he wants to keep that a secret."

Eames snorted and finished swallowing before he replied: "Oh, that. It's pretty boring, actually. He used to cheat at Craps."

"I _knew_ it!" she exclaimed triumphantly, grinning as she thrust her fists into the space above her. Arthur rolled his eyes.

"You mean _we_ used to cheat at Craps," he corrected.

At Ariadne's raised eyebrow, the Forger sighed and reached into his pocket, producing a small die that looked exactly like Arthur's, only blue. "_This_ would be _my_ totem."

"Seriously?" She gestured at the space between them. "You guys have the exact same totem? Here I would have thought yours would be a forged poker chip or something."

"Yes, which would be incredibly obvious and therefore easier to replicate," he explained. "Truth is, Arthur and I have been partners in crime since before we even knew about dream-sharing."

"Ooh, I wanna hear!" she squealed as she leaned forward on her desk, not caring that she sounded so much like an over-caffeinated schoolgirl right now. Being in such close proximity to Arthur for extended periods of time tended to bring out sides of her personality that even she never knew existed. Hormones were the most likely culprit, but Ariadne liked to think that she'd simply grown more comfortable around the two of them in the time they'd been working together.

"Well," Eames began even as the annoyance on Arthur's face grew to previously impossible levels, "our game plan was simple. Casinos always catch you when you're using two loaded dice, because it comes up the same two numbers every time. Our strategy involved weighting one die with a number statistically likely to result in a lucky roll, and because we didn't win every time, nobody ever noticed that one of the dice kept rolling the same number."

"What number was that?"

"Well if I told you, that would defeat the entire purpose of lugging this totem around," he answered. "To tell you the truth, though, his is the weighted one. Mine has another distinguishing feature."

Ariadne knew better than to ask what it was. "Would it have been so hard to tell me that?" she queried, staring in Arthur's direction. "It sounds like you guys had a great time together."

"He just doesn't want to tell you how I know he loves spooning," Eames remarked with a wink. "It was somewhere during that period of our lives that I happened to find out."

As soon as he said that, her mind traveled to a place it was never meant to go. "Did you guys wake up in bed together or something?"

Arthur said nothing, only frowning deeper, but Eames cracked a grin so wide it threatened to split his face in half. "Have you ever wondered why our dear Point Man never has more than one drink?" He continued smirking in Arthur's direction.

"We were fully clothed, and I'm still convinced it was Cobb who put you up to it," he rebutted with his usual deadpan.

"Whatever you say, Darling. I only wish you'd stayed for breakfast."

Ariadne knew they were merely joking, but couldn't keep the blood from rushing to her cheeks. "Let's get back to the dice!" she shouted too suddenly, and both men stared at her. She deflected them with a sheepish grin. "So you hold onto it because it reminds you of that time in your life?" she asked somewhat more calmly after a moment had passed.

"That, and his love of symbolism means he likes it because it reminds him that luck and other unpredictable forces can be controlled if you're willing to cheat," explained Eames. "Like with impossible architecture, for example."

She looked to Arthur for a response, but he was currently occupied with his steak. Her eyes returned to the Forger. "What about you?"

"Oh, definitely the time-in-my-life thing," he answered a little too readily. She squinted at him suspiciously. "What? I can't tell you all my secrets, can I? Only way you're going to find out is if Arthur decides turnabout is fair play."

Again, she tried coaxing a reply out of him with her eyes, but he continued saying nothing. Most likely he had caught onto the game the Forger was playing and wanted nothing to do with it. The sweet, intimate Arthur that she had known only minutes before had disappeared again, hidden under a stoic façade that always came over him whenever something upset him, like a turtle retreating into its shell. She frowned.

"Spoilsport," Eames muttered, and went back to devouring his burger.

She couldn't agree more.

* * *

"So are you ever going to ask me about mine?" she asked much later, curling her arms around him and pressing her naked chest against his back, a perfect reversal of their earlier positions. Linen sheets too comfortable to be real still covered his legs, but her presence merited a much more favorable reaction. He sighed.

"Is it really that important to you?"

"Uh-huh." She started nibbling on his collar bone, and his nerves sent small signals back to him that caused a certain part of his body to stir once more. "You told me about your totem. Why don't you want to know about mine?"

"_Eames_ told you about my totem," he corrected. "And it's really not something we should be sharing with each other. The risks are too great."

She moved her focus to the place where his neck met his shoulders, and began to suck and knead the flesh in a way that would have left a mark had any of this been real. She took a break from this long enough to reply: "What risks? If you're talking about pulling you into a dream and trying to trick you, I would never do that. And even if I wanted to, I still don't know the weight or feel of the die. I just wanted to know the story behind it."

"Why is that so important?" he asked even as she continued to gnaw on his clavicle.

"Because, if we're going to be open with each other, these are things we should know. How am I supposed to know you trust me if you don't open up to me?"

"We go inside each other's dreams for a living," he pointed out. "It's hard to put more trust in a person than that."

The nibbling stopped. "And yet you always find a way to take something intimate and strip all the magic away by turning it into a job," she accused. "You take Eames in with us too and I still don't think you guys are very close."

"We're closer than you know," he rebutted. "It's just that I can't stand him sometimes so we don't spend a whole lot of time together outside of jobs."

"And that's fine," she conceded. "But you can stand _me_, can't you?"

He nodded.

"Then why don't you tell me things without me having to pry it out of you? Why don't you ask things about me?"

"I..." He stopped and tried to formulate an answer that would satisfy her. "I've never been very open with other people," he finally admitted. "And that's made me very good at this job. When you steal people's secrets, you get very good at guarding your own in case other people try the same thing with you. I've been closed off for so long I don't know if I _can_ open up anymore."

Ariadne chuckled and pressed her lips against his back, planting a raspberry there. "I've already gotten you to open up this much. You remember how tense you were when I first kissed you after the Fischer job?"

He laughed as the memory resurfaced. "When I got home that night I couldn't stop rolling my totem because I was so sure it was a dream," he said. "I never thought you would be interested in me."

"Well, neither did I until you kissed _me_," she reminded him. "But you changed my mind pretty quick."

Arthur smiled, but said nothing. He had nothing to say.

"Look, I get why you're so protective of your totem. But it feels like you're putting more trust in it than you are in me."

"It's the one thing I can be sure of to tell me when I'm in reality," he replied, even though he knew that wasn't the complete truth.

"Are you sure about that?" she challenged, pushing her way through the fog of his lies. "Earlier you told me I always look perfect in these dreams. You've found something that's different about the way I look here as opposed to the real world. How is that any different from a totem?"

"I can't always kiss you to make sure you're real," he explained. It wasn't a perfect lie, and he knew she wouldn't buy it. But the truth would only provoke a worse reaction.

"Bullshit. It's not like we're keeping this a secret. Besides, it's fun to mess with Eames' head."

He chuckled, then quickly frowned. She had seen right through his illusion, and the only thing he had left was the truth. He felt a sudden sympathy for Cobb, if only because he finally understood how insufferable she must have been when she was trying to uncover his secrets. "Fine, let me rephrase that: I can't be certain that you'll always be around. If you were to leave for some reason, I'd still have the die to remind me of what's real. If I put all my trust in you being around forever, there's a good chance you won't be."

Her arms shrank away from his body and Ariadne shuffled away to glare at him from the other side of the bed, holding the sheets protectively over her bosom. "Well if that's the case, then this has to stop."

Arthur blinked, not having foreseen such an answer. He had expected her to be upset, certainly, but that exact response was not something he could have predicted. "What?"

"I'm not going to share my body with somebody who won't let me completely inside his mind," she clarified. "You can't just use me for sex and not put all your trust in me, especially when I put all my trust in you. If you want to close yourself off because you're afraid of what might happen if I leave, then I'll give you your space."

"You're not actually sharing your body," he pointed out, for lack of anything better to say. He had no rebuttal for anything else she said, mostly because she was absolutely right. "This is all taking place inside our minds."

Wrong answer. "That doesn't make any difference," she insisted, channeling the same cool rage that he had glimpsed when she woke up after meeting Mal for the first time. "Whether we're screwing in dreams or reality, it doesn't change the fact that you're taking me for granted and making me fight my way inside. What are you so afraid of?"

Arthur sat there staring down at the imaginary sheets for a very long time before coming up with a reply. "That history will repeat itself."

"You think we're going to end up like Cobb and Mal?"

He hesitated again before answering. "Yes."

Ariadne sighed in frustration. "Well, we're not. Do you want to know why? Because we know the mistakes they made. We're not going deeper than one level, we aren't building things from memory, and we haven't lost sight of what's real and what's a dream. The reason they fell apart wasn't because they had too much trust in each other. It was because they didn't have _enough_."

"What do you mean?"

"I told you what Cobb did to her, didn't I?"

He nodded, then collapsed back onto the pillows. "Cobb didn't trust her to wake up on her own, so he tried to force her."

"And that's where they went wrong. I'm giving you the chance to be open with me, and if you don't then I'm just going to put some distance between us, not mess around inside your head."

Arthur closed his eyes. "Fine," he sighed. "What made you choose your totem?"

"Are you asking me because you actually want to know or because you're scared of losing me?"

He blinked and looked up to see her frowning over him. "You'd actually leave over this?"

Ariadne shook her head. "I wouldn't leave the team, no. You guys are the only ones I can trust not to take advantage of me. But I don't want a relationship where we say things that the other person wants to hear just so we don't have to own up to the fact that it's going nowhere. I want you to ask me things because you actually want to know more about me, not just because I want you to."

That prompted Arthur to think harder about this than he had been. Where _was_ this relationship going? He'd entered into it at the Architect's insistence, and she had made him happier than he ever let himself believe was possible. But he'd seen what could happen when people got too close, and had done his best to ensure that they would not encounter same pitfalls. But it seemed that all his careful planning had only steered them into a different kind of disaster. Like Odysseus, he'd chosen to take his chances with the lesser of two dangers.

And just like in the myth, there was no right decision.

"I'm sorry," was all he said in reply.

They waited there in silence until their time ran out. Then the walls began to crumble around them, and whirling chaos tore them away from each other like dust in a hurricane.


End file.
